Animal Dreams

I tried out the two very old chairs in the living room. They had rose slipcovers and were comfortable. In a corner near the window was a beehive fireplace, and next to it, a clay vase of peacock feathers. Every home in Grace had one of those; it was a local feature. You could pick up half a dozen peacock feathers on any given day, in the orchards, as you went about your business. When the vase was full, you took them to one of the old women who made real-feather pinãtas, and then you started your collection over. The practice had not been allowed in our house because Doc Homer said the feathers were crawling with bird mites; he dreaded to think what those old women's houses were harboring in the way of microorganisms. It became Hallie's and my joke. Whenever he unreasonably forbade us to do something, we'd look at each other and mouth the words "bird mites."

The bathroom and kitchen must have been added on about mid-century. The refrigerator looked prehistoric, but worked. It contained a loaf of fresh bread in a paper bag, some tomatoes and figs, a block of goat cheese, and a six-pack of Miller Lite. Emelina's estimation of the bare essentials. I popped open a beer and went back around the house in time to witness the demise of the second rooster.

"Is it okay that there's a goat loose in the courtyard?" I asked Emelina.

"Shit! I'm going to tan John Tucker's hide. John Tucker!" she yelled. "Get your damn goat out of the garden, please, or we'll have him for dinner!"

There was a noise from inside and the back door slammed.

"You don't really want to watch this, Codi," she said. "But I guess you see a lot worse in your line of work."

I sat on the porch rail. I was no longer in the doctoring line of work. It's true I'd been educated to within an inch of my life, and had done well in medical school. My mistake was assuming medicine was a science like any other. If it's carburetors you know, you can fix cars, I reasoned; if it's arteries and tendons you fix people. For reasons that were unclear to me, I'd learned the science but couldn't work the miracle: I'd had a crisis while trying to deliver a baby. My problem turned out to be irreversible. Emelina knew all this. I was here, after all, with no more mission in life than I'd been born with years ago. The only real difference between then and now was wardrobe.

"Tell me if I can help," I said.

She ignored me. "Okay, watch your hands, Curty. Keep them way back." Emelina was small, but didn't give that impression. Her jeans had "Little Cowboy" stitched on the label, and undoubtedly belonged to one of her sons. Emelina and I graduated from high school the same year, 1972. Under my picture in the yearbook it said, "Will Go Far," and under Emelina's it said, "Lucky in Love." You could accept this as either prophecy or a bad joke. I'd gone halfway around the world, and now lived three-quarters of a mile from the high school. Emelina had married Juan Teobaldo Domingos the same June we graduated. Now J.T. worked for the railroad and, as I understood it, was out of town most of the time. She said it didn't bother her. Maybe that's as lucky as love gets.

Curty laid his hypnotized rooster on the block and held its feet, keeping the rest of his body as far away as possible. It never regained consciousness. Emelina swung the axe over her shoulder and brought it down on the mark. The pink, muscular neck slipped out of the collar of feathers as if the two parts had been separately made. The boys hooted and chased after the body as it thrashed across the dirt. But I was fascinated by the head: the mouth opened and closed, silently, because the vocal cords were in the part that had been disconnected.

"That's the way, Curty," Emelina directed. "Don't get blood on your brother. Dip him all the way in. Now pluck him quick or he'll go stiff on you. Start with the wings, see how Glen's doing?" She wiped perspiration out of her eyes.

I was amazed by the muscle definition in her upper arms and her easy command of the axe. Her hands stayed surprisingly clean through the whole operation. She reminded me of Hallie, the way she could do things. Though of course Hallie would never decapitate anything.

"I can't believe you're watching this," she said when both boys were settled down to plucking feathers. She went inside and came out with a beer. She sat down next to me on the wide wooden rail, knocking the heels of her sneakers against the crossbar like a child. I was very conscious of my height. Sometimes I had an acute feeling that small women were better put together somehow, more in control of their bodies.

"You used to have a hissy fit when we'd go over to Abuelita's and she'd be killing chickens," Emelina said. "Remember? Even when we were big, twelve or thirteen."